


Maveth

by Drivysb



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canon Divergence - Episode: s03e05 4722 Hours, Drama, F/M, Implied/Referenced Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-24
Updated: 2020-06-24
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:13:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24897496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Drivysb/pseuds/Drivysb
Summary: And the time has come to reveal to Philip the story of his parents...A angst one-shot about the FitzSimmons' son conceived on Maveth.
Relationships: Leo Fitz & Jemma Simmons, Leo Fitz/Jemma Simmons
Comments: 4
Kudos: 23





	Maveth

“Uncle Coulson, will you tell me the story of my parents?”

The first time Philip asked, Coulson was surprised, intrigued where that idea would have come from. Surely, it wouldn't spontaneously pop into the head of a six-year-old boy. Even if he were a prodigy, so similar to his parents.

Coulson sighed, looking sweetly at the one with whom he shared the same name.

“One day I'll tell you, Philip.”

“Can't that day be today?” he insisted, filled with an innocent curiosity.

“Unfortunately, no. I made a promise to your mother and I'd be breaking that promise if I told you today.”

The little boy seemed frustrated, but he understood. Coulson covered him with the duvet to keep him warm and wished him good night and sweet dreams before leaving the room.

Coulson didn't have to think long to find out who had aroused Philip's curiosity. It was pretty obvious, actually. So when he left the boy's room, he immediately went to Daisy's, knocked furiously on the door and confronted her, hardly caring if he was raising his voice too high.

“How dare you arouse Philip's curiosity about his parents?” he questioned, angry.

Daisy inhaled deeply, trying to swallow the anger that threatened to engulf her. Mentally, she counted to ten.

“He has the right to know”, she struggled to keep her tone in check, crossing her arms in front of her body.

“Do you remember that I made a promise to Jemma?”

“Technically, it wasn't for her. It was for a piece of paper she had in her hand at the moment you rescued Philip.”

“Don't get smart with me, Daisy. That was Fitz and Simmons' last will, I'm a man of my word and I'll do it.”

Bothered by the high argument in the hallway, May left her room, closing the door behind her with a bang and walking towards them with quick, resolute footsteps.

“Hey, you two! There are people trying to sleep in this place," she scolded them.

Coulson took a deep breath, in attempt to calm himself down

“I'm sorry, May. I didn't mean to wake you up... Daisy planted the seed of curiosity in Philip's head. Now he wants to know the story of his parents.”

May turned her head abruptly towards Daisy, with an angry look on her face.

“What the hell are you doing? He's only a six-year-old boy!”

“And I've been in his shoes, if you don't remember. And I know what it's like not to have even a vague notion of where I come from. I would give anything to know-”

“Don't even try to compare the situations because they're extremely different!” Coulson cut her off.

“And how exactly do they differ?”

“They differ in the fact that we'll tell Phillip his whole story, but at the right time. He's too young to understand.”

“And it was a request from Fitz and Simmons. Especially Simmons,” added May, “could at least respect your friend's last wish.”

Hurt by what May had just said, Daisy felt her eyesight blurred by the tears welling up and streaming down her face and did her best to brush them away.

“Wow! That was rough... You didn’t have to go that hard, May. You know what Jemma meant to me. Jemma and Fitz.”

“Then respect her memory.”

Daisy closed her eyes, feeling a bit guilty.

“Forgive me. I just... I was looking at him today at FitzSimmons' lab,” she swallowed hard, her voice breaking, “he's a perfect combination of his parents and he was there, in the same place I got so used to seeing them... It was inevitable to remember and just speak their names... Philip asked me and I said some things about how they loved that lab and that you, Coulson, were the one who could best tell the story of his parents. I didn't want to cause any trouble. But I'd never seen his eyes shine as bright as today when he heard me talk about his parents.”

The words tumbled out in a sob. A sob she'd been struggling to hold back.

Coulson and May exchanged a look. Even after so many years, it was still hard to accept that tragedy.

The director of SHIELD touched Daisy's arm in an attempt to comfort her, desperately wanting to hug the girl, but believing that gesture would only shatter her.

“It's okay. I know you meant no harm. But for now, let's respect the request Jemma made in that letter. She knew what she was doing. Get some sleep, okay?” he said in a soft, tender voice.

Daisy just nodded and went back into her room, determined to sleep and try to forget that controversial episode, regretting having gotten into a matter that didn't concern her. She loved her friends too much and knew she shouldn't have done that.

“Do you think I was too harsh?” May asked, without facing Coulson.

“She needed to hear that. Otherwise, she'd try again. But question her loyalty to Jemma... was a low blow.”

The specialist raised her eyebrows, finally focusing her gaze on Coulson

“Use her own life history as an excuse for what she tried to do with Philip was a low blow.”

The agent nodded. She was right, after all.

“Fair enough.”

“I'm going to sleep. Are you coming?” she asked, putting an end to that subject.

“I'll be there in a minute.”

“It's better to come soon,” she said, turning around and walking towards the room she shared with Coulson. “I can't guarantee I'll be awake when you cross that door,” she added, suggestively.

He just gave a half a smile, allowing himself to breathe normally again. And so it would be for the next few years. He would breathe peacefully until the inevitable moment when he would have to tell Phillip the truth.

Coulson had already confronted extremely dangerous enemies and bizarre creatures. He'd even conquered death. But, intimately, he was terrified and wishing the moment of truth would take a long time to arrive.

Relieved, he walked to his room, thinking that fortunately it would take a few long years for that moment to finally come.

But it seemed that Coulson had only blinked his eyes once since that moment of reflection in the hallway, and when he opened them again he encountered a twelve-year-old Phillip standing in front of him.

Just as prodigious as his parents.

His intelligence was above average. And at such a young age, he was already deciphering numerical codes and understood complex scientific formulas with impressive resourcefulness and brilliance.

The agent went to the base common room with slow steps in an attempt to gain confidence and courage. He took a deep breath...

Time is a funny thing. How slow it goes when we need it to go fast; how fast it is when we hope it runs slow.

He saw Philip sitting on the couch, his hands resting on his knees. The director of SHIELD stood at the door to admire him for a moment. And the boy raised his head when Coulson finally entered the room.

“You wanted to see me, Uncle Coulson?”

There was a melancholy smile on the face of the SHIELD director. He came closer to Philip, advancing slowly, but in firm and steady steps, deciding that he should no longer waste time prolonging that suspense. Sitting next to Philip on the couch, he looked deep into the boy's eyes, grabbing his attention.

“Philip, we have more in common than the name. We're both survivors. We're both tenacious when it comes to life. We're tenacious about living.”

The boy frowned, staring at him slightly confused.

“Don't worry. It'll make sense when you read the letter your mother left for you.”

Immediately, Philip's face changed. A look of surprise, then expectation, crossed his eyes.

“You're only 12 years old and have been through so much... You don't even remember... I know you have a vague memory of your parents…”

In fact, Philip was always caught in a distant memory involving his parents and a sandstorm. Throughout much of his childhood, that reminiscence disturbed his sleep, awakening in his subconscious in the form of a nightmare...

“The point is, many years ago…” Coulson paused for a moment, trying to clear his throat, “many years ago, we came across a monolith, a Kree artifact. Accidentally, your mother was dragged into this monolith and sent to another dimension and she remained there alone for three months, incredible as it may seem. Dismayed by the loss of her best friend, your father, Fitz, did everything... The possible and the impossible; the unimaginable to save her. He did everything he could to open a new portal and he succeeded. So he ended up on the other side.”

“The mission of the team left behind, that is, May, Daisy, Mack, Bobbi, Hunter and me, was to keep that portal open for as long as possible so your father would be able to save Jemma and then return to our planet. We failed. We depended on Daisy's power and it was too much for her to bear. Without the brilliance of your parents, it was hard for us to open the portal again. It was years of study, using all sorts of resources we could find. But we never gave up. Every time one of us came close to quitting, another member of the team reminded us that your parents would have gone to the end of the universe to save any of us. Then we recovered that unshakeable belief that we would soon save Fitz and Simmons and finally see them as we always have. Working together in the lab.”

“Three and a half years after the portal closed behind Fitz, we were able to open it again. I went through it myself while Daisy used her powers at full capacity to keep the passage open. There was a creature chasing your parents. A frightening creature I couldn't identify, but it gave me a terrible, unexplained sense of fear and hopelessness. I only remember your mother, struggling to save you, giving me a child and I couldn't understand what was going on... I called for your parents, shouted their names at the top of my lungs, but they wanted you to be saved... They wanted me to go through the portal while they stayed behind to distract the creature. They disappeared into the sandstorm. I tried... But I lost sight of them. And when I realized how fragile was the baby your mother put in my arms, I decided it was best to do as she said. I went through the portal again, unable to rescue Fitz and Simmons. But with you in my arms.”

“Your mother had left two letters stuck to your... Well, improvised clothes. In one of them, she told me how you and they survived through all those years on that planet we later called Maveth. She said they found an abandoned cave of an astronaut named David Robert Jones…” he breathed a long sigh before proceeding with his account, “your parents found carcasses, the remains of countless men who had already been sent to that planet... Fitz and Jemma believed that they had been sent to bring the creature that lived there to Earth. Or as a blood sacrifice. They found a diary of this astronaut and he seemed like a good guy who didn't even understand what his mission was... It's pretty obvious that some of the remains they found were his…” now he swallowed hard, “Philip, I've told you enough. The rest, well... Your mother would like you to read when you're old enough to understand. I think that's the moment,” he said, handing over the folded paper to the boy who stared at him, astonished.

The boy was so perplexed it took him a whole minute to get the letter out of Coulson's hands - enough of trying to hide the truth from you. Philip felt as if he had momentarily lost the ability to reason and express himself verbally. He stared at the agent, noticing that his eyes were filled with tears.

“As this moment of emotion is over and you feel ready, I hope you read the letter with an open heart and understand your parents' reasons,” Coulson said, getting up from the couch and staring at the boy who remained speechless. With one last sad smile, the agent turned around and left the room with slow, measured steps.

The boy waited until Coulson was out of sight to unfold the yellowish paper, whose edges were already deteriorating. His heart leapt when he saw his mother's handwriting. The letter was written in pencil and somewhat erased, but it was possible to distinguish the words. After taking a deep breath, the boy began to read it:

_"Dear Philip,_

_I write this letter hoping that one day my friends will find a way to open the portal and rescue you from this hostile, inhospitable planet. I know they'll find a way even without my help or your father's. I know our team would literally go to the end of the world to save us, just as we would do the same for them. Just as I know that the creature that inhabits this world, and from which we have fled relentlessly for all these years, will do the impossible to stop us from leaving this place; so, resigned to my fate, I have a strange feeling that neither your father nor I will be able to escape alive, no matter how hard we fight. Our priority, Philip, is you. And when our friends show up, it is you who must be saved. You're the one who deserves to live._

_I remember the day your father showed up to try to save me after three months of brutal loneliness here. First I hugged him, whispering his name and refusing to let him go. I needed to make sure he was real and not a figment of my imagination playing a trick on me. Due to dehydration, there were no tears, but I was crying. Weeping with joy and emotion at seeing him again, weeping with sadness and mourning our unhappy fate, our misfortune._

_After that moment, I broke off his hug and hit him hard on the shoulder, allowing me an angry outburst, fighting with him for risking his own life, irritated that he took that risk... I had hoped that he would come to my rescue, but when I realized the risk he took and that the portal had closed behind him, I was convinced of my selfishness. Fitz was safe where he was, with the prospect of an abundant life, and now he shared the same fate as me. Your father let me have my moment and waited for my anger to subside, so he held my arms and told me that his life would never be complete without me, that he could never live with his conscience if he didn't even try to save me. I hugged him again, now more resigned. I decided that if we had to share this unfortunate fate, it would be better if it was in each other's arms._

_Just like me, in my first days alone here, Fitz remained for a long time beside the point where the portal had opened and closed behind him, hoping that our friends would come to rescue us. But at that time, I was already used to hopelessness - even in the presence of someone I believed I would never see again. I tried to convince him to move on with me to the abandoned cave that I had found. But he was irreducible at first. So I could do nothing but stand by his side, waiting for a rescue that never came._

_Watching the growing frustration in his face has torn me apart inside. I had already been where he was. I knew what it was like to wait for help that wouldn't come..._

_When he finally gave up. He tried to disguise his discouragement, but I realized how desolate he was. I told him we needed water and I knew where to find it. Then, still frustrated, he agreed to follow me to the abandoned cave which I had found._

_We joined mental efforts - as we always have - in the attempt to get back home. We had very few resources, so we failed in all the plans we tried to execute with the artifacts left by the deceased astronaut David Robert Jones, who had built and inhabited the cave before us. He had brought with him some NASA technology many years ago. It had become virtually obsolete..._

_As our plans went wrong, our resources were depleted and our energy was also depleted due to our vitamin deficiency - given the lack of sunlight and poor nutrition - we were resigned to our fate and convinced that it would be our end. Reading the diary of the poor and unhappy astronaut we met in a corner of the cave, there was no way I could not relate to the growing pessimism contained in those pages._

_Like him, we accepted our bad luck. And I even agreed with your father when he said - laughing, but without humor - that we were cursed and the cosmos was against us. He was surprised that I didn't reply with my skepticism. But I no longer had the strength for it._

_Your father and I have been best friends since we were 16. Inseparable, except for some issues in our second year as SHIELD agents. We spent some time fighting and not speaking properly, but before being swallowed up by the monolith, we were getting along again. And your father had invited me to dinner. I was sure that would be a decisive new step in our relationship; that from that day on, things would change between us._

_I couldn't have been more right. But the circumstances were totally different from what I imagined._

_During our stay on this inhospitable planet, we only had each other. And however I thought no one knew your father better than I did, I saw another side of him that I didn't know... Our friendship has evolved. We always saw each other as a safe haven. But stranded on an unknown planet, that feeling became even stronger and more intense..._

_I know you are old enough to understand when I say that we were reckless in conceiving a life under these circumstances. But understand that, given our vitamin deficit, our inadequate diet, our reduced fluid intake, our physical fragility and biological vulnerability, I believed that conception was impossible. So I was frightened, scared and desperate when I identified the early symptoms... Your father felt the same way. I had knowledge of women who gave birth in precarious conditions over the centuries. But mine was a unique condition. I didn't believe we were going to survive... You must also understand that it never meant that we didn't love you. Quite the opposite._

_You were the only ray of sunshine in our lives in the years we spent here. You gave me back hope. And for that very reason, you deserve so much more. You don't deserve a life of privation. You need to see the sunlight, have friends, dreams, a career, a future... You need to experience the flavor of fresh fruit and the pleasure of eating an ice cream on sunny days. You need to feel, at least once, the raindrops on your skin to understand how precious they are. You need to admire the clouds and their peculiar shapes. You need to meet other people and understand that some of them may even hurt you, but there are many that will show you how much it is worth preserving your trust in humanity._

_Someone once told me that we can't miss something we never had or knew. This planet was the only reality you knew in your early years of life. But you need to know another one. I wouldn't be a role model if I didn't fight for you to have better luck than your father and I. And so, with a sore, broken heart, I say goodbye... I separate you from us so you can have a real life, with dreams and goals. Which we no longer have here. This is not our place. Even though you were born in this world, against all odds, you need to know the world your father and I came from._

_Your name is a tribute to the one I know will sooner or later come to rescue you._

_Goodbye, my son. Never forget that your father and I both love you."_

_\- Jemma Simmons_

When Philip finished reading the letter, the tears slid across his cheeks. In all those years he had insisted that Coulson tell him the truth about his parents, and in the face of all his refusals, he had outlined so many different scenarios in his imagination without ever getting even close to what the original story was.

Philip had a vague memory of his parents. Aside from the sandstorm.

He remembered his father sitting next to him in the cave making a plane with a piece of paper. Probably from one of the pages torn out of the astronaut's diary to which that cave belonged. The memory was fragile and, as the years passed, it gradually disappeared from his mind like a distant dream. However, with a bit of stubbornness, he insisted on preserving its essence, even though he could not remember the details.

Later that day Philip scribbled a few words on a piece of paper, folded it to form a little airplane, and at the first opportunity he had to leave the base and look at the sky - the clouds and their peculiar shapes, as his mother had said in the letter - he threw it up, watching the paper plane become a tiny point, more and more distant, until it disappeared into the sky.

Then Philip lowered his head, thoughtful and smiling, thinking of the words he had written...

_“Dear Mommy and Daddy,_

_Wherever you are, I hope you'll be happy to know that I have goals, dreams and friends. I hope you know that I have tasted fresh fruit and that I love eating ice cream on sunny days. I have felt raindrops on my skin, I have admired the clouds and I have met good and bad people. And even if the memory is vague and distant, Coulson, Daisy, Mack, May, Bobbi and Hunter talk about you so much that I feel as if I have spent a lot of time with my parents. I hope you know I love you, I miss you, and I have a nice life._

_I hope you're proud of me, because I'm very proud of you both.”_


End file.
